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Bringing Affordable Robotics To Big Agriculture
kkleiner writes "Boston-based Harvest Automation has made good on its mission to bring robots into the world of agriculture by introducing Harvey, a bot tasked with the rather modest job of moving plants around in nurseries and greenhouses because people aren't keen on doing the laborious work. At a price point of $30k each, two bots would cost the same as three unskilled human laborers who earn about $20k annually not to mention medical bills due to injury. Harvey's job may not be flashy, but considering the potted plant industry is valued at $50 billion, the bot's little impact could translate into significant money."
Living in the middle of Illinois there's a lot of farming news and farm shows around here, and you see an awful ot of impressive tech, and even science. They have self-driving combines and harvesters that use GPS, cell phone apps very useful to them (some control machinery), chemical testing of the spoil and plants available... you have to know a lot to farm these days.
I know someone's going to complain "BUT JOBS!!!" but the jobs the tech in TFA are jobs are jobs only the most desperate want. Agriculture has been constantly replacing jobs with technology for centuries. It takes fewer and fewr to feed more and more.
Someone's going to bring up GM, GM isn't used much around here, most seed is hybrid -- but the biochemists and agronomists have DNA study of the plants they breed.
There's a TV show that comes on here on Sunday morning at 5:30 AM and it's the only OTA show that's not an infomercial, and It's pretty interesting. Here's their website. I'm not a farmer but it is pretty interesting.
I wouldn't consider potted plants "Big Agriculture." That's soybeans, corn, and wheat.
Free Martian Whores!
...two bots would cost the same as three unskilled human laborers who earn about $20k annually not to mention medical bills due to injury.
That depends on the "unskilled" labor you're talking about.
People legally able to work will get $7.25 per hour (minimum wage) only when they are scheduled to work. In other words, they will work when needed and it'll be seasonal. So, said worker will be really lucky to make $7,000 for the year at that job. AND the hours will be sporadic - he won't know what days he's working or even he's going to work that week. And some of these jobs, you show up at 5AM to get in line and wait until 7AM to see if you work that day - ALL UNPAID.
I know because I had to do it to pay bills. And no, if HURTS your resume if you are a white collar worker. All those employers who say that they want you doing "something - anything" when looking for a "real" job are full of shit. If you work as a laborer, they think that you aren't good enough to work in your profession.
It's better to be unemployed than "taking anything to work."
Now illegal workers, that's a whole different ball of wax.
there has been talk of urban farming. putting greenhouses onto roofs of buildings to grow veggies. since you can't survive on $20k in NYC, these would be perfect for the job
Those displaced workers could work on assembly lines building potted plant moving robotics. At least until those assembly lines are replaced with robots. Then those workers could work on assembly lines building robots that build potted plant building robotics. Until...
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
This is another move toward producing what humanity needs without human working. How many persons we need to feed the USA today?
At some point we will have to admit that there must be an universal income regardless of work done, Otherwise the end of the story will be robots producing goods that nobody can afford except the robot owners.
Now I'm waiting for big robots in affordable agriculture, I'm trying to work out what that means or looks like but it sure sounds cool and promising.
This is the road we are going down.It's easy to imagine a time when the only things of value are land and energy (and the land and energy required to make something). A breakthrough in those areas (space colonization, cheap fusion power) and nothing will be of value. My desktop 3-D printer/assembler can make be a garage sized 3-D printer/assemblerr, which in turn can assemble me a new Ferrari. It can also disassemble my old Ferrari for raw materials then disassemble itself to save space. Will we get there? Unknown, but fortunately for us science fiction writers have anticipated this for a long time and proposed some interesting and probably workable solutions.
My personal favorite is everyone gets a stipend like Native American tribes or people from Alaska. A low but above poverty amount, say 30K a year. To be fair everyone gets it. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, me. People can work if they want to. Jobs would be scarce and desirable no matter how bad. If 40 or even 80% of the population is unemployed, who cares? We would have to get past class warfare, because anyone who had a truly needed job would be pretty valuable and probably make a lot of money, but again, who cares if you can print a Ferrari or surfboard or whatever else you want practically for free.
What are the two unskilled laborers to do then? At the very least you need to add their wages to the real cost. If they turn to crime, this would even be much more expensive.
The increased productivity results in a higher absolute level of taxes being collected. Higher money means the govt can afford to spend more on prisons (or convert them in soldiers).
Isn't this how it supposed to work?
(grin)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Ah; but if only one of them turns to crime, we can hire the other one to protect the robot against the criminal!
I was recently picking blueberries at a u-pick. This is easily the best year I have ever seen. Literally the bushes were breaking under the weight of the blueberries. You could eat the berries off the bushes like corn on the cob. The problem is that most berry areas are having a similar banner year along with there being a huge amount of berries planted. All this has resulted in a price crash. This crash has made it borderline uneconomic to harvest the berries. But if you had a robotic harvester this changes the pricing quite a bit. Once you have purchased the machine the price to run it should be very low and the amortized costs are there regardless if you run the machine or not. Thus you can harvest the berries even in banner years. Another option is to also plant excessive crops of different types and then focus your harvesting on the most profitable crops in any given year.
It is my firm belief that robotic agriculture will change the entirety of how we produce food. A few simple examples of changes that few people discuss would be the terrain that is used for harvesting. Two of the key advantages of flat land for grains is that the crop will develop consistently across large areas and thus when harvested be of a predictable quality when turned into bread and whatnot. The other is that it is far easier to build the massive harvesting machines if they don't have to contend with any variations in the terrain. The goal of the massive machines is to vastly increase the ability of a single human to do a huge amount of work.
But with robotic planting, tending, and harvesting you don't need to "multiply" the work of a single human. Thus the robots can be fairly small. Also the robots can adjust the feeding of the plants so to grow a fairly consistent crop in inconsistent terrain. Then in the end when it comes time to harvest. The robot can methodically harvest at the perfect moment for any given plant (repeatedly bypassing those not ready) plus it can methodically sort even down the single grain.
Another advantage is where the cost of the entire cycle of agriculture can be so low that you could robotically convert marginal land into low producing land and still produce food at a very low cost. The return on quality land would be higher but by being able to cheaply bring marginal land into production it will form a scenario of relentless competition thus holding down prices. Plus once again due to the nature of robot economics once marginal land was in production the cost of continued production would be very low. This could also be carefully factored into the logistics calculations where a less efficient production is competitive where it might reduce some other cost such as shipping.
This last factor might result in it being cheaper to produce greenhouses and then produce goods year-round much closer to the point of consumption rather than shipping them half way around the world.
Also robotics can be used inefficient ways such as massively processing marginal land making it quite productive. Normally this is a time eating process that is not worth it. But if you can leave some robots cooking away in a forest for a few years and come back to find nutrient rich terra pretta then again the economics change.
What I can't foresee is which direction agriculture will take. I have a feeling it will be mega massive monster farming companies with very few employees that depopulate the rural farm communities. But at the same time the low barriers to entry might mean that many people will jump in the moment a competitive opportunity is perceived. Personally where food is such a fundamental part of living (right there after clean water) that I don't believe that any small group of companies should be allowed to concentrate ownership of any nation's food production. If they get it wrong, or play evil games, massive numbers of people could suffer.
One prediction that I will solidly make is that there will be very very very very few people employed in agriculture in 20-50 years.
Is it just me, or were we all hoping to see Huey, Dewey, and Loie from the movie "Silent Running". That what I think of when I think of agricultural robots.
They could get rid of half those robots in the video if that guy walking around with his hands in his pockets was doing some actual work.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The lack of jobs for unskilled laborers will discourage illegal immigration. Americans don't want those jobs, or we wouldn't have vast numbers of openings for illegals!
Dry up the jobs, remove the attraction to immigrate.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Those 3 laborers can also dead-head, apply fertilizer, identify disease, fix the sprinkler system, and harvest without damaging the product.
Among other things.
How much would a robot, that does all those things, cost now?
--
BMO
You have hit at the exact problem with all robotics where modern robotics will eat all low skilled jobs. It is a cultural problem not a technological or economic one. Some societies will become feudal with a small few owning everything and the great unwashed masses completely left out of the economic game and on some kind of punitive welfare.
But some societies will know that they are all about their people. One guess is that concepts like Minimum Basic Wages (different from minimum wage) and high income taxes will shift the focus from production and capitalism (which is easy with robotics and thus shouldn't be greatly rewarded) to consumption and fairness.
I am not talking about communism for if you look at the defective planned economy of the Soviet Union where they focused on production and things still sucked. The idea is that you focus on simple things that encourage consumption and equality and then let people figure the rest out themselves. But most societies focus on the magic term GDP and with robots that number can be very very high even with extreme unemployment. Thus it is a terrible standard to measure a happy economic situation.
But the stupidest societies of all will ban or fight robotic production.
Another hidden cost. If the person doing the work is displaced by a robot then he won't be able to buy stuff produced by other machines. If half of our labor force is out of work, then the demand for the goods will drop and so will prices. I bet that the robotic industry will come to the government troth to bail them out. Another factor is R&D used to develop this technology came out of the War department. Ironic that the same worker paid taxes to have himself displaced.
Funny but in the 1970's, the Debeer diamond cartel was able to buy up R&D from GE to prevent industrial diamonds from being able to advance to compete with "investment grade diamonds".
You Have Thirty Seconds To Comply.
I frequently have that experience here.
The largest in the US paid anywhere between 25% and 50% of their revenue, but keep spouting that nonsense that anything less than 100% is not their fare share.
This is the road we are going down.It's easy to imagine a time when the only things of value are land and energy (and the land and energy required to make something).
And things the value of which lies precisely in the human touch and human relationships. Live entertainment. Restaurants. Tours. Landscape design. Coaching and mentoring. Hairdressing. Fashion design, arts and crafts -- anything creative. Counselling, palliative care and some other health services. Business-to-business sales. Reception and hospitality. Boutique sales. Bribery, government and arms sales. OK, maybe not so much arms sales.
Hmmm, which gender is traditionally better at the 'human touch' stuff, again?
"the demand for the goods will drop and so will prices" Do you realize that you just quoted basic market theory while seeming to rail against the market?
And when the prices drop, then the displaced worker will be able to purchase the same amount for less. When this is taken to the ridiculous end, all those who are demanding that we adopt the utopia of people only doing what they want and still having everything they want might become a reality. However, most things break down before they get that far.
And as long as we in the States maintain at least some attempt to enforce our borders (just like every other country/economic union in the world), those billions won't be competing with my local burger flipper. Some jobs just are not outsourceable.
"This is the road we are going down.It's easy to imagine a time when the only things of value are land and energy"
and drinkable water. i would eat my tinfoil hat if you seriously think fresh water can be done at a low enough cost to not assign it monetary value. we pay $130 every month for water.
"(and the land and energy required to make something). A breakthrough in those areas (space colonization, cheap fusion power) and nothing will be of value. "
space colonization is science fiction. we don't even have a radiation shielding planet except venus which is so hot from green house effects that it rains acid.
"My desktop 3-D printer/assembler can make be a garage sized 3-D printer/assemblerr, which in turn can assemble me a new Ferrari."
bioplastic reels can't assemble a car it can make molds for all the parts but it cannot make your garage a replicator.
" It can also disassemble my old Ferrari for raw materials then disassemble itself to save space. Will we get there? Unknown, but fortunately for us science fiction writers have anticipated this for a long time and proposed some interesting and probably workable solutions."
i have read the scifi classics. i have seen many little screen sci fi, and very little is 'hard' scifi many are just clever plot ploys to make the story more palatable. there are real solutions, but the usa got sewer and running hot and cold water happy.. millions of miles of pipe to make toilets where once you needed to build an out house. there is a guy trying to convince people to use portable outhouses that use sawdust to mask the odor and make garden compost from it. and i have yet to read the scifi where they deal with the nasty details of too much poop. even though factory farms are now contagion hot houses because they live in their own filth and are feed a lot to make a big mess.
"My personal favorite is everyone gets a stipend like Native American tribes or people from Alaska. A low but above poverty amount, say 30K a year. To be fair everyone gets it. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, me. People can work if they want to. Jobs would be scarce and desirable no matter how bad. If 40 or even 80% of the population is unemployed, who cares? We would have to get past class warfare, because anyone who had a truly needed job would be pretty valuable and probably make a lot of money, but again, who cares if you can print a Ferrari or surfboard or whatever else you want practically for free."
replicators do not exist. they are not real. robotics have done a lot for a lot of people. 3d printers don't do what you say they do. they make plastic that can hold up to firing 3-5 nails from a handgun or a rifle. sure you could download plans to mold and fabricate that way but then you need a forge and ingots of iron or aluminium then you need to have high precision tools to assemble parts. it goes on and on. there is a reason they make a car on an assembly line and not out of a glorified 3d printer. and don't forget the government. they are not on the same page as you. napster showed what can be done when you ignore us and international law... and it was not pretty. the riaa and mpaa do not want people to get music and movies for free even if the internet has made it cheaper and easier to watch tv/movies and listen to music, they want their cut. if you told alexander gram bell that oil, metal, dye and a laser could let you fit 6,000 songs or hours and hours of movies... heh we have come so far...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I don't understand why this is news. Automation has been used in agriculture for a long time in applications much more advanced than this. Why should we get excited about a simplistic robot which moves pots around according to explicit user instructions and pre-placed guidance tape? Show me a robot that, based on the type of plant, moves it to a suitable area where it will receive just the right amount of sun, or perhaps a robot that will ensure each plant gets exactly the right amount of water/nutrients given varying weather conditions, or a robot that monitors each plant for signs of disease, or really just a robot that does something that robots haven't been doing since, you know, the beginning of robots.
we also need to stop the big over time mindset that can drive 60-80+ work weeks. Why should some people being pulling them when others are not working.
that counts industry experience and hands on learning. Computer Science is not system administrator work and at some schools it's not even programmer work.
> because people aren't keen on doing the laborious work.
Or...
> two bots would cost the same as three unskilled human laborers who earn about $20k annually not to mention medical bills due to injury.
My money is on door #2.
At this rate, adults and robots will take all the jobs young adults used to have, making them even more useless by the time they graduate college.
Socialism is of the devil. What makes you or anyone else honestly believe that the wealthy are going to play along with your idea? Wouldn't they just float the notion that it's better to reduce population than provide handouts?
Do you have something against democracy? If the vast majority wants some profits to be shared so that people can live, the rich minority has to comply, or to install a dictatorship.
Beside, redistributing wealth is not socialism. I did not talked about seizing machines and move them to public ownership.
Infinitely+1?
What are the two unskilled laborers to do then?
They can talk to the at-risk kids that think they're "too cool for school", and show them the consequences of their lousy attitude...
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
If the vast majority wants some profits to be shared so that people can live, the rich minority has to comply.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." -Benjamin Franklin
Besides, the rich minority doesn't have to comply. They can leave the country. They have the resources to do that. Try voting your hand into their pocket, and Atlas will shrug so fast it'll make your head spin.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
We did reap the benefits, though -- people now have 40 (USA) or 35-ish (Europe) hour work weeks, in general, with time off. This is a whole lot better than a century ago.
Says who? The GAO says 12.6%. But keep spouting that nonsense that any big companies actually pay the sticker price.
PS: "The report found that even when foreign, state, and local taxes were included, the tax rate of large companies rose only to 16.9 percent of total income, still well below the official 35 percent." From the same link.
Wrong. Jobs still go overseas or go away, just that you don't see them leave.
Look at the plumbing industry. Drilling holes in a wall and sticking copper tubing through them seems like something that has to remain solidly on shore, right? Let's say it's 120 hours of work to plumb an average house. So you show up to work some day and your boss says "we're switching to PEX." Because you don't have elbows or joints, there is no soldering, and because those holes don't have to line up perfectly, plumbing a house with PEX now takes only about 40 hours. Where did the extra labor go? Some went overseas to the PEX factory, but the rest got laid off.
At the burger place? Where do you think those patties were manufactured? Do you see a McButcher shop in the back of the store? No, the animals were likely raised and slaughtered and packed in rural Brasil, or some other country with cheaper labor and farmland.
It's a global economy now. Parts and materials come from everywhere. Protectionism means little at the borders when it's only keeping out the $7.25/hour illegal immigrants. The total cost to the US economy of illegal immigrants is less than $30 billion. (Compare that to the Wall Street bailout of $750 billion, or to the Iraq / Afghanistan wars with their costs of over $2 trillion.) The real losses to the U.S. job market have come from increased efficiencies, more automation, and overseas manufacturing and labor, where $trillions of dollars have left our payrolls. But hey, let's get Fox banging the illegal immigrant drum and blame them for taking our jobs, because Mexicans are visible and the TV cop shows prove they're all criminals and drug lords. It takes our easily distracted minds off the facts of where the real losses are coming from.
John
I've shoveled manure, mucked out barns, dug ditches and footings, all by hand, and pumped septic tanks and cleaned sewers with low-end power tools and a pump truck. Not my all-time favorite work but it's honest and at the time paid just about enough to survive on (rent, food, utilities, maybe some books and brewskis.) When you're young and healthy it's OK. Later, no. This was all thirty to fifty years ago; I've no idea the spread of pay these days.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ous&q=fortune+500+average+tax+paid
Overall the top 500 paid an average of half the 35% rate. The GAO report is a good place to start if you really want to know, or one of the news story summaries. Roughly half the entries on a screen and a half of search results were for articles on companies paying zero or less federal tax.
Why would someone buy unmanned machines that have to be manned?
Think commercial aviation. Commercial aircraft fly around on autopilot a lot, they can even land themselves. Similarly the combines/tractors/etc are on autopilot. Precisely navigating the fields, precisely dispensing varied levels of fertilizer or pesticide as testing indicated. Such automation increases yields/profits.
Government agencies have little power to regulate what private individuals do on their own land, and even less when it involves agriculture.
That is so untrue. Do not confuse a lack of power with a decision to give a group with lobbyists a break.
Something requiring empathy and/or creativity. If there's somebody neither creative nor emphatic, he should be on a disability. Because there is not going to be any work not requiring these things left for people in the near future.
I was shown a pretty impressive set up in a huge greenhouse set up in south lincolnshire which produced pots of herbs.
The sowing of pots was largely automated and there were rails running down the length of the greenhouse with metal trays across the rails.
Essentially the rails were loaded at one end and robots would lift the trays and move them along the rails as the herbs grew. watering was automated so it was long production lines the length of the green house and the robots took care of the plants and the far end of the line the pots were taken off and shipped to supermarkets using minimal manual labour.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Articles discussing the "rise of the economic machines" come up very frequently, and every time I think "this is a good thing". Nobody wants to do these shitty jobs. These people will be available/forced to work on something that a human is better at performing. From a business point of view, robotic automation of labor lowers the cost of production. This in turn should result in lower prices for the consumer. Obviously this is very simplistic, but I believe there is a lot of truth to it. Technological advances are good for the human race.
Where is moderation: -1 False?
Globalization is one of those strange games. You know, the ones where the only winning move is to not play. In the short run (historically short - it's still measured in a lifetime or two) it seems like a good trade-off to the average Joe Consumer, who sees lower prices at the local Wal-Mart and nothing else. (Nevermind how Wal-Mart's business plan has become the broken window fallacy writ large, making a tremendous segment of low income earners dependent on shoddy goods sold at a massive markup which also need to be frequently replaced.) In the long run it simply funnels all of the money out of the middle and lower classes, until their purchasing power and standard of living reaches that of the countries from which the companies producing their consumer goods source their labor.
Of course, none of this will matter when robots eventually replace most labor anyway, and I'm personally of the belief that when the elite do not need us anymore, they will not feed us anymore. Think of how dependent the typical person is on global industry and finance and just how little self-determination they actually have. Now consider the implications for their freedom and survival when they're rendered landless and penniless in a world where their labor is worthless. The 'jobs issue' is a much bigger deal than most people think in the long term. This is going to be a very interesting century.
Just talked with one of the developers of this,
says they are clusterbots with insect like simple evolutionary learning ability. There are apparently agro areas of 100 square kilometers and the amount of human labor is prohibitive and removing greenhouse plants is extremely laborious as all plants have to be moved several times to different locations in a life cycle, as well as watering pruning, harvesting. It is the hardest type of stoop labor and apparently there are not enough people who want to do that.
Care for the machine.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
>> No, the animals were likely raised and slaughtered and packed in rural Brasil
I doubt that burger is actually meat, but I see your point.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
replicators do not exist. they are not real. robotics have done a lot for a lot of people. 3d printers don't do what you say they do. they make plastic that can hold up to firing 3-5 nails from a handgun or a rifle.
Stop, just stop there. Put down the conversation and walk away. You just have no idea what you're talking about, not even a little bit. You know nothing about 3d printing. I know almost nothing myself and even I know that you're just completely lost.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So what? It's not that hard to work and you end up with more than just food and shelter.
Since its built with off the self parts, the cost to produce a remote controlled car (which it basically is) must be fairly cheap (I'll naively say a couple grand). I know there some other hardware, computers, custom software....in my mind that might be another ~13K a pop. so I'm thinking 50% margins. nice :)
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
What, 100 of them? What about the 10's or hundreds of thousands who will lose jobs because of the tech? Add to that the millions who are unemployable because of other tech over the last 30+ years? That answer just won't do, especially when blue-collar jobs are pretty much being created overseas.
Those benefits to the worker stopped right about 1908ish. Those benefits go the Ownership/Stockholders/Management now. Workers have gotten squat.
In principle, I agree. But if too many people are left behind (not getting any of the benefits, because just a few that do not need it use it to make the bank-accounts even fatter), society is at considerable risk, and morally these advances have negative impact. E.g. if this just means these people must do even worse jobs or are unemployed, then there is no benefit. That is not a problem of technology itself, of course.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Good point. While the 20k/yr per worker includes feed and care (as they are self-maintaining), the 30k/robot is just the initial cost. That is not going to cover it! Somebody has to program these things, clean them, change broken parts, etc.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Seems the moderators include a lot of psychopaths, i.e.empathy-less scum, today.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When looking at the price of diamond engagement rings, I read that 4/5 of the markup of price of diamonds was in their processing. I wonder if there is any money to be made by designing robotic diamond cutting machinery. I would think that something like this could be designed since it is a well defined process with limited parameters (4 C )? Does anyone know of anyone doing this?
TANSTAAFL
Not only maintenance, but also someone to be around to fix a problem caused by the robot.
I've worked in the potted plant industry since I was a child. I have been the one to move plants from A to B, and I can tell you, these robots seem like a nice idea, but they are not going to provide massive productivity gains.
First problem - they're going to be slow and clumsy. If you have four guys working, one guy can tell them "I want the #15 Yellowtwig Dogwoods to be moved from section 340 to section 275 and placed three feet apart between the Sugar Maples and the Swedish Aspen." Good luck getting these robots to understand such nuance. I guess if you're just aimlessly moving plants around, not a big deal, but the reason you're moving plants are not aimless.
Second problem - I didn't read anything in TFA that described these robots as "smart" (though maybe I missed it). Are these machines able to pop the container off and look to see if the plant is root bound and ready? Are they able to even identify which plants they're moving? Are they able to understand the difference between section 350 and 250? Sure, these are not insurmountable problems, but to get this to work is going to require a much more expensive machine (and maintenance, etc). The employees I work with are all very intelligent and understand what plants need to be in order for them to be sold.
Third problem - replacements. How are you going to manage a time/season sensitive crop successfully if there is an unexpected failure with the robots? You get more robots, but that will take time that you potentially do not have (an early winter storm will be here tomorrow... must get this done today).
Fourth problem - these are designed to grab pots that are sitting directly on the ground. Pots that sit directly on the ground have been one of the biggest problems in the industry for as long as I can remember. Once you deal with any plant where the center of gravity is higher off the ground, plants are very unstable and will not stand on their own in even a light wind. This means plants need to be tied off to something (the old way) or they need to be set inside a pot-in-pot system (the new way). Either method will greatly complicate this robot. Will it be able to untie the plant from the wire support? Will it be able to grab a pot by the lip when the lip is at ground level? This robot simply won't work.
I could probably go on and on about the flaws of this robot, but that would be excessive. It's a novel idea, yes, but I don't think it's very practical. A better idea would be an autonomous falcon robot that could patrol the field to keep pests away. That would be epic.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
My grandfather is 97. Listen to the stories of someone as old as him and you'll realize just how far we've come.
Do you think they could carry bowls of hot grits?
but but it was on mainpage of slashdot so thats how i know 3d printers can make guns...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Or listen to someone who is in the 60's and realize how far we've fallen...
Cheap storage VM.